Slightly less successful is the revamped Home folder. It does away with the more expansive Web-style navigation bar in favor of a cleaner one that's absent most elements you'll never need and hides ones you won’t need often (such as the Search field, which only appears after you click the magnifying glass button). The status bar has also been replaced by a tiny pop-up, a tidier but largely unnecessary change. The left sidebar is technically better organized than it used to be—it organizes all your hard drives in one section, all your local folders in another, and all your Network locations in a third—but it “bleeds” into the dark gray toolbar in a way that looks almost sloppy enough to be a mistake.

Another questionable change is offloading a number of system settings into a new download called Advanced Settings (or the GNOME Tweak Tool). The Software Center describes it as allowing “the adjustment of a number of GNOME configuration settings that is felt would not be of interest to ordinary users.” Maybe, but wanting to adjust user interface fonts, add system icons to the desktop (such as for the Computer and Home folder), select a wider variety of themes, and change what happens when you close a laptop’s lid don’t strike me as being that out there (and certainly aren't in, say, Windows 7). The Advanced Settings module is easy enough to acquire via the Software Center (and is of course free), but it introduces additional confusion in an Ubuntu release that otherwise is about reducing it.

General software changes are something of a mixed bag. Mozilla Thunderbird is now the default email client, replacing Evolution, and it’s a crisper and more satisfying program that nestles nicely within the OS. LibreOffice, the revamped OpenOffice.org productivity suite, doesn’t look quite as cohesive, but offers the usual large number of features and is a welcome part of the package. The Gwibber social networking client has been rewritten to be speedier and more efficient at using system resources, but you can’t view multiple streams of updates at once and some previous features (such as being able to filter based on which service the update came from) have been removed. Both Thunderbird and Gwibber content are available at a click of the messaging icon in the top-of-the-screen toolbar, which is a nice convenience.

32-Bit CompatibilityThere's also some good news on the technical front. Muliarch introduces much-improved support for installing 32-bit apps on a 64-bit computer; you still can't use every program out there, but you can use a lot more than you used to. And if you’re running Ubuntu 11.10 on a system without advanced video acceleration, you’ll have a better overall experience now thanks to a more robust implementation of Unity 2D. It looks almost as good as Unity 3D, and all you’ll miss are a few visual effects. Think of it as the equivalent of running Windows 7 in Basic mode rather than Aero mode. On most systems, Unity 2D will be faster, though in the graphic details it definitely smells of compromise.

Looking ForwardIn a way, that’s true of much of Ubuntu 11.10 (“Oneiric Ocelot”), but it’s not always a bad thing. Canonical’s developers have clearly devoted a lot of energy to making sure the system both looks and performs sharp; they still have a way to go, but they've made noticeable strides. The improvements and missteps are both part of the process of transitioning to the next LTS Ubuntu (12.04), which will come out in a few months. What exactly that will be remains to be seen: Ubuntu 11.10 is the second consecutive release that’s toyed and tinkered with the basic formulae but broken little new ground. For that reason, it's probably not worth an immediate upgrade if you're happy with your earlier version of the OS. Much of what’s here has been, and remains, good, but we hope that Canonical will take more chances next time to show what Ubuntu, and its here-to-stay Unity interface, can really do.

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Matthew Murray got his humble start leading a technology-sensitive life in elementary school, where he struggled to satisfy his ravenous hunger for computers, computer games, and writing book reports in Integer BASIC. He earned his B.A. in Dramatic Writing at Western Washington University, where he also minored in Web design and German. He has been building computers for himself and others for more than 20 years, and he spent several years working in IT and helpdesk capacities before escaping into the far more exciting world...
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